Every day is something new to everyone. Children are born, they grow up and learn how to do basic everyday things, and then they grow into adults and learn how to perform in their jobs and become functioning members of normal human society.
However the most important things we have to learn in life cannot be taught to us, they are learned through trial and error (a lot of error), they are learned through doing things wrong over and over and over again until we dig ourselves into this deep and never-ending hole that seems impossible to claw and climb our way out of.
That’s what I learned this year, that sometimes it’s not about simply going through one tough period and then you have some symbolic and philosophical revelation and come cleanly out the other side, ready to pass your new found wisdom onto others. It’s about going through so many rough patches back-to-back that you think it can’t possibly get any harder, and that you’ll never dig yourself out of this endless hole that just seems to get deeper.
Going into your first year of university is terrifying, I was so scared to move away from my family. They were my source of comfort and reassurance in this scary and undetermined world, my parents got me through every difficult time in my life, and always had the right advice or thing to say when I was upset.
So, moving away from them and into this unknown city with thousands of unknown people after coming from an isolated and rural part of Scotland where my closest neighbour was the cows in the field next door was bound to be a little bit terrifying.
Naturally I started to meticulously look for societies and clubs to join to meet new people in the same drifting boat as me, just as many fresher’s do. I already knew I wanted to join the student newspaper from before I even left high school as writing is my passion and something that also brought me a great deal of comfort and self-satisfaction in my ability to do it, so that was a no-brainer.
I had also made a resolution to myself to be more fit and active when I moved to uni, which I later realised that I needed a sport to fill the hole that leaving my horses behind had left, as they were well and truly what brought me the most comfort of all. It didn’t take long for me to land on the word ‘mountaineering’, and a passion for it that rested dormant in my heart from years of going on holidays to Glencoe with my family.
The USMC has taught me things I didn’t know I needed to learn, mainly about myself. The sport and the people I have met in it have taught me how resilient and ambitious I truly am, and how far I’ll go to never back down from anything I think is right.
Starting a new sport, in a new place, with people miles ahead of me with years of experience, after I had come from dreading PE in school was the most daunting thing I had ever done. Anyone who knew me a year ago would probably think I’m crazy for starting the sport of mountaineering, the only sport I loved was my horses and I never even saw them as a sport, and suddenly I fell deeply in love with hillwalking.
Even when my parents worried for my safety, even when I worried for my own, even when everything in my body and mind was telling me that this wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing, and even when I felt inadequate compared to every single other person in the club, I just kept pushing forwards, and upwards.
Almost like there was some invisible rope tied to me and hillwalking, or me and the club, that I just couldn’t pull away from. I kept coming back after every knock down I faced, and continued to do so in everyday life. Whether it was my course, my sport, my writing, or something deeper in my personal life; I got back up, and no one can take that fact away from me.
Being a fresher is about doing everything every day for the first time. The first time you meet your lecturers, teachers, peers; the first time you make a recipe; the first night you spend alone in your accommodation, take the bus, go to a pub, have a drink, do an assignment, start a hobby, start a sport, begin your first adult relationship, and start your journey of figuring out who you are.
Life is scary, but it’s not impossible. Finding out who we are will be a long and difficult road – on top of having adult responsibilities with teenage and childlike brains – it will be full of love, experiences, both good and bad, heartbreak, loss, happiness and joy. Every lesson is one being taught to us for a reason, and all you have to do is trust yourself a little bit.
Featured image credit: Adam Cosci.
Article first published in Brig Newspaper.
Amelia Fryer 